No figure in rugby league history has straddled the divide between the rival Lancashire clubs of Wigan and St Helens more successfully than Eric Ashton, who has died aged 73. He will be remembered with a minute's silence at St Helens' Knowsley Road ground before the traditional Good Friday derby this afternoon, having made 497 appearances for Wigan, coached both Wigan and St Helens to Challenge Cup final victories at Wembley, lifted the World Cup as Great Britain captain in 1960, and become the first rugby league player to be recognised in the Queen's honours with an MBE, six years later.

Ashton was born and schooled in St Helens but rejected by his local club: Wigan had to travel to Edinburgh, where he was serving in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, to sign him up in February 1955. A recommendation had come from one of his army colleagues, Bert Marsh, who had returned to the town as a pub singer. Refusing a request to sign immediately as an amateur, Ashton waited until his service ended in May, and joined them on a six-match trial in August.

However his performance in a pre-season match within the Wigan squad was enough to earn a £150 signing-on fee, and a place on the wing for the first game of the season against Dewsbury. Ashton scored two tries but was eclipsed by the performance on the other wing of Billy Boston, a Welshman who had joined the club two years earlier, and scored seven.

It was more than a year before Ashton first teamed up with Boston down the right, in what was to become a peerless centre-wing partnership through 246 appearances together before they retired in quick succession in the late 1960s. By that time, Ashton had been Wigan's player-coach for six years, a position he initially took up on a trial basis alongside Johnny Lawrenson in 1961, when Jim Sullivan was taken ill.

Ashton lies fourth in Wigan's all-time list behind Sullivan (774), Ken Gee (559) and Ernie Ashcroft (530), and in addition to the 231 tries and 448 goals he scored for a total of 1,589 points, his centre play helped Boston to his phenomenal total of 478 tries in 487 appearances.

The pair became great friends off the field as well as combining so well on it. "When I first went to Wigan, Billy was the bee's knees," Ashton recalled. "After my trial match, he came over and said jokingly 'Make them pay! Don't do your trial for nothing!' We went out for a drink that Saturday night and from that day on, we were good friends, and for years we went out together every Saturday night with our wives."

Ashton captained Wigan in a record six Wembley cup finals, winning three of them - against Workington in 1958, Hull the following year and Hunslet as player-coach in 1965 - but losing twice to St Helens, in 1961 and 1966. However he regarded the 1960 championship final against Wakefield Trinity at Odsal as "my best achievement". Ashton was switched to stand-off, with Boston in the equally unfamiliar position of centre, but scored two tries in front of an 83,190 crowd in a 27-3 win for Wigan.

Having received his first representative call-up for Lancashire within three months of his debut, Ashton made his first Great Britain appearance in the 1957 World Cup in Australia. He was a member of the Lions tourists who retained the Ashes the following summer and captain-coach of the Great Britain team who won the 1960 World Cup on home soil, although he described his appointment as captain of the 1962 Lions tour as his greatest honour - despite suffering a broken leg on the trip.

He spent four seasons after his retirement as Wigan's coach and another over the Pennines at Leeds, before finally joining St Helens. He enjoyed immediate success as their coach with the 1974-75 championship and remained involved with the club for almost all of the subsequent 34 years, with cup final wins in 1976 and 1978 before stepping down in 1980. In 1992 he became a director, and was chairman from 1993 to 1997, during which time Saints' Wembley victory over Bradford in 1996 made him the first person to win the cup as a captain, coach and chairman.

Ashton had been suffering from prostate cancer for the last five years but continued to support the other directors as life president, barring a brief falling-out over the controversial dismissal of the former coach, Ian Millward. He is survived by his wife Doreen and their two children and four grandchildren.

· Eric Ashton, rugby league player, coach and administrator, born January 24 1935; died March 20 2008